I missed a woot for a combination VHS player/DVD recorder, and that got me thinking about transferring my old VHS tapes to DVD. The one I’m most concerned about is my tape from the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea - it has been watched a few hundred times and the tape is probably near broken through in some places. I know the whole thing practically by heart, but I really want to preserve the tape…it’s mostly gymnastics and diving.

Anyway, in the comments for that woot, I saw that you can’t use such a device to copy commercial tapes. We have a bunch of movies on VHS that we never watch anymore, and it would be nice to copy them onto DVD so we could put them in our collection and maybe actually watch them someday instead of having them gather dust. To copy commercial tapes, you need something called a “video enhancer” or “video stabilizer” inserted between the VCR and the DVD recorder. Since I already have the VCR, all I would need is a DVD recorder and the video enhancer.

So I did some Googling and some Froogling, and I ended up buying a Panasonic DMR-ES10S DVD recorder on eBay for $75 including shipping. Next I needed the video stabilizer. The Sima CT-2 had been recommended to me in the woot thread, so I got that on eBay for $55 including shipping. So hopefully I will be able to record my tapes to DVD soon, provided I can get it all hooked up properly - and if there’s enough space in my entertainment center for everything!